The Story No One Tells
by Pinefur
Summary: A dragon raid! But the hero isn't really a hero, and maybe the princess is getting too comfortable living outside the castle. And being killed by a knight in shining armor really isn't part of the dragon's plan. But that's not how fairy tales work. Right?
1. Prologue

A huge shape blocked the light at the top of the cave. Wing beats filled the air and a roar made the ground tremble.

Gyio glanced up as the red-orange creature swooped down and landed on the stone, hidden within the shadows. Its claws scraped the rock, and two bright yellow eyes stared menacingly forward.

"You have it?" Gyio unfolded his wings, stretched them.

The shape snarled. "Of course." It stepped forward, and thrust a small figure into the patch of light. It struggled vainly. The shadowy shape laughed. "Foolish humans. They come and fight us, and still they haven't learned! We're not going to go away anytime soon." The creature growled in satisfaction.

Gyio narrowed his eyes. "The king is an idiot. With any luck he'll send some foolhardy knight. And then the plan will fall into place."

"They will go to the dragon who lives nearest to them." The dark shape shifted slightly, and a shaft of sunlight gleamed on fiery scales. "Like we want them to. _He_ is the only one who knows, and he will be destroyed. But there will be no evidence of our part in it all." Its eyes blazed in the darkness. "And then we will overthrow Krenmar, and we will make the humans scurry to their hiding places."

Gyio noticed a hungry glint in the yellow orbs as the red-orange creature spoke.

"Dragons will rule the land again."


	2. Torin

_They said the dragon was the size of a house and it had gleaming teeth and claws. They said it had huge red bat-like wings, fiery scales, and cruel bursts of flame that incinerated boulders. They said that it grabbed the princess and carried her away in a blast of smoke while the king and his advisors watched, horrified._

_They could have been exaggerating_.

Torin brushed back a strand of dark brown hair and looked up at the large stretch of rock ahead of him. _Still that much to climb?_ He sighed. Why did the King choose him to go on this quest, anyway? There were far better knights than him; he had only just finished training. If the King really wanted the princess back, he would have sent some other knight, a better one. The way that the advisors had described the attack terrified him, the thought of actually facing the dragon made him want to turn around and run back to the castle, miles away.

_Why me?_

The young man touched the sword at his belt. At least that reassured him a little. It was sharp, forged by the elves, but what could it do against a dragon's scales? Dent them, maybe? Somehow he doubted that small dents would defeat a powerful creature like a dragon.

Muttering under his breath, Torin focused his attention back on the path that led to where the dragon was supposed to live. Ahead of him was a steep cliff, and above that still another expanse of stone and occasional dry bushes. Farther on, at the top of the mountain, a speck of darkness showed where a possible cave could be.

_Still so far! And it took me _days_ to get here! Ha! They say this is the closest dragon to the castle._ He was so tired and hungry, how could he face a dragon and expect to survive the encounter? If only the King had sent a different warrior! Torin kicked a rock in frustration. "Owww." It hurt.

_Plus they gave me so little food! I don't have enough to even make half a _peasant's_ meal._ Everything seemed so unfair. Grudgingly Torin admitted that it was an honor to be chosen for something so important. But the King had many knights; if Torin failed, another soldier would go off to find the dragon and rescue the princess.

Actually, he thought that the princess wouldn't like being rescued. Being locked up in the castle all of the time had always bothered her, and she would probably welcome being taken away. Still, the King had given him orders to bring her back… Reluctantly Torin walked the short distance to the cliff and started to climb.

Luckily there were many footholds in the jagged rock face, which made it easy to ascend. The young knight was at the top of the cliff within ten minutes. _Okay, that part was easy at least._ The only thing left between Torin and the dragon was a foreboding stretch of gray, lifeless stone. Sighing, Torin stepped forward.

' - , - ' - , - ' - , - ' - , - ' - , - ' - , - ' - , - ' - , - ' - , - '

The sun was low in the sky by the time Torin had reached the end of the dull span of rock. He slumped down against a large boulder, exhausted. Climbing across miles of boring stone was extremely tiring.

_Oh well, can't do anything about the dragon until the morning anyway,_ Torin thought._ I should sleep._ The dragon's cave was still close, yet it was far enough away that he would be safe during the night. Gratefully he closed his eyes and darkness overwhelmed him.

Torin's dreams were restless, mirroring his emotions. He didn't really want to go and fight a dragon, but what could he do? The King had commanded him to bring back the princess and, if possible, destroy the monster that guarded her.

Suddenly, in his mind, a shape loomed in front of him. Torin reeled back, only to hit a hard wall. The shape swirled and took the form of a dragon, but instead of scales, its skin was made of fire. Torin grasped for his sword, but it was gone; the sheath was empty. Terrified, he looked back at the dragon to see it lunge for him, bright flame billowing from its mouth. He jerked back –

And hit the boulder hard. Torin's green eyes snapped open, wide with fright. Immediately he shut them again as the sun's glare blinded him. The man rubbed his eyes painfully. "Sunrise already?" he muttered as he finally looked up.

Slowly his eyes focused. Torin stood hesitantly, one hand on the hilt of his sword. No sign of the dragon. To the cave it was, then. In any case the dragon's den was fairly close, only a twenty minute walk or so. Grumbling, he started off.

As he neared the cave, Torin wondered exactly what he was supposed to do. No one had ever really told him precisely the right way to fight a dragon. Most of the methods he had heard involved the princess being tied on a tree or pole outside the cave, waiting to be rescued. But there was no sign of any life around the dark space within the mountainside. Okay, that ruled out much of what he had heard.

Next theory: go to the mouth of the cave and challenge the dragon to come out and fight. Well, that seemed positively suicidal. Were people meant to believe that a dragon would peacefully walk out of its cave, knowing full well that a knight was waiting to kill it? No! It would probably use flame to burn the soldier before he finished speaking!

Now what? This only left one option for Torin, one he didn't really like. Go inside the cave to see where the dragon and the princess were. This didn't sound too great either, but it was the only plan that had any possibility of working.

Torin glanced around, drew his sword from its sheath, and crept into the cave.

It was dark, though not pitch black like he had expected. Actually, he could even see the ground ahead of him. Strangely enough, the light seemed to grow as he moved farther into the mountain.

After a few minutes Torin became less hesitant to keep walking. There was no sign of the dragon; maybe he was lucky and it was out hunting for food or treasure. Maybe the rescue would be easy.

Feeling a little hopeful, he traveled onward. The light was getting brighter now. He could see down the tunnel until it curved sharply to the side into what seemed to be a large cavern.

Stealthily Torin edged forward and peered into the wide space.

His eyes widened. There was enough space here for at least three dragons; it was that large! Forgetting to be careful, he took a step forward –

Something slammed into his side. It flung Torin across the cavern, and he landed gasping for air on the hard rock. His side stung as he sat up, winded. Looking anxiously around he saw his sword lying on the ground a few feet away. He scrambled for it, almost touching the hilt…

And a giant foot crashed down on it.

Torin froze, his hand an inch away from the claws that gripped the blade. Slowly he looked up, scuttling back as he saw the entire creature for the first time.

Wings outstretched, claws extended, tail lashing the air, a dragon loomed in front of him.


	3. The Dragon

**Thanks to the people that reviewed! Actually, only one person reviewed the last chapter, and I got two reviews on the prologue. So remember, _please_ review. Really. **

"What do you want?"

Torin waited for claws to slash down at him, then realized that he had heard a voice. Slowly he opened his eyes; he hadn't realized that he had closed them. _Did… did that dragon just _speak? "W-what?"

A booming roar. "What do you want!? Why are you here!?"

_Great Spirits, it _did _speak._ "Uh…"

"ANSWER ME!"

Torin cringed and looked up at the dragon. Okay, so it wasn't quite as big as a house, and its scales weren't exactly fiery, although they were a bright yellow-orange. The wings were red, that part was true, and he didn't really want to test if its fire could really melt boulders. It didn't quite match the advisors descriptions, but still. It was a _dragon._

"Well… er… I'm supposed to come rescue a princess you captured." Immediately he realized that he shouldn't have said that.

To his surprise, the dragon lowered its claws, and dropped down to stand on four feet instead of just two. "Oh, well, you can have her."

"_What?_"

The dragon glared at him. "I _said,_ you can have her. Really, are you deaf or something?"

_I'm talking to a dragon. _Talking _to one. _Torin searched for something to say. "But… but… you kidnapped her! Don't you want to keep her?" Some part of his brain told him to be quiet and just to free the princess and leave without having to battle the dragon, but he couldn't resist asking.

"Kidnapped her? What are you talking about? No, I found her outside of my cave. She was babbling about a giant creature picking her up and carrying her away from her castle."

"So… you _didn't_ attack the castle?" Doubt flickered in his mind like a candle flame. Still, Torin found this idea hard to grasp.

"Of course not! What would I want with a princess? Any human is bad enough, but royal ones are the worse! All they get you is an army of knights charging up to your cave and coming to fight! Do you really think I want that?" The dragon growled and Torin flinched. "Humans don't do anything useful, either. They just moan and complain about being captured."

"Not useful? Don't you eat them?"

"_Eat_ them? Why in Flainon's name would I do _that?_"

"Well… I just assumed – "

"You humans assume too many things." The dragon snorted. "You can take the girl and leave, I don't care." Then it narrowed its eyes. "You're a knight, then?" It sounded doubtful.

"Yes." Torin blinked.

"You don't have any armor."

"I have a sword!"

At that the dragon seemed to grin. "Not anymore." Torin remembered that the weapon was trapped under the creature's foot. "Give me back my sword!"

"Why? So you can stab me with it?" It inspected the blade. "Not that it could do much."

"Give it _back_!" Torin lunged for his sword, forgetting that the dragon was much larger than him. It carelessly slammed down its scaled tail in front of him. The man crashed into it and was thrown back.

"You're feisty, aren't you? It's not going to work. I can stop anything you do easily, so don't try to move."

"I thought you said I could bring the princess back." Torin stood painfully. His side ached where he had hit the tail and the stone floor. "Why don't you let me go?"

"Oh sure, I will, and you can take the princess. But I'm not going to give you back your sword, am I? Why should I take an unnecessary risk?" The dragon kicked the weapon across the cave. Torin flinched as his blade clattered against the wall loudly. "Don't whimper or anything. I'm not going to kill you!"

"You're not?" ventured Torin. _Had everything he'd heard about dragons been wrong?_

"No. What's the point? Killing you would just mean more knights coming, and anyway, you're not that big of a threat right now." The dragon flicked its tail back and forth lazily.

"Then why don't you give me back my sword?"

The dragon breathed a wisp of bright flame into the air. "I told you that already!" It sighed in an irritated manner. "You humans are so strange."

"Oh, right," snapped Torin. "Well, the King ordered me to rescue the princess from you, so it's not _my_ fault that I had to come here just to have a dragon take my sword and then hear that it won't give me back my only weapon."

"Why do you think _I_ had anything to do with her being captured?"

Torin blinked; he hadn't been expecting that as a question. "Because you're the closest to the castle, I guess."

"And there you go _again_, always assuming things." The dragon scraped the ground angrily with its claws, and Torin winced at the grating noise. "That's exactly the reason I _wouldn't_ want to do anything to your castle. I get blamed even when it's not my fault. It's very unfair."

"Even when it's not your fault?"

"Well, I might have attacked it once or twice, but only because some knights kept coming up to my cave, challenging me. I wanted to scare them away, but now I've learned just to ignore them." It grinned again, this time at Torin's shocked stare. "You're amusing for a human, especially one who's a knight. What's your name?"

"Um… why do you want to know?"

"Because you're one of the only people who has actually spoken to me without screaming and running away. It's surprising how few people ever actually talk to a dragon."

"I can guess why," Torin muttered.

The dragon tapped its talons on the stone. "Well, leave, then. Do you want to rescue the princess or not?"

"Yes," said Torin defiantly.

"Then follow me." It turned away and walked toward a large tunnel carved into the side of the cave. Torin hesitated; he could run while it wasn't looking, grab his sword, and-

"Are you coming?" The dragon was staring at him, its eyes glinting.

The knight glanced at his blade again. "Why are you letting the princess go so quickly?"

"Well I don't want a human messing around in my caves, and I'm not going to fight you and destroy my chance of making her leave."

"Making her leave?"

"Yes, I don't think she'll be too happy about you coming." It turned away.

_Not happy?_ Everything seemed to be going wrong; this wasn't how encounters with dragons that had captured princesses usually went. _Well, it's lucky for me, then,_ he mused, and was surprised at the thought. Before he could stop himself, he spoke. "My name's Torin."

The dragon looked back at him, shifted its wings. "Terascythe." It turned away. "Come on."

Torin's gaze flickered around the cavern, then to his sword, and finally to the tunnel. Suspicions flooded through him, and he watched the yellow-orange shape of the dragon disappear into the channel. The young man cursed himself. _How could I let a dragon trick me like this? I must be crazy!_ But… he was curious, too. Suddenly a faint glimmer of courage flared up in his mind and he grasped it.

Taking a deep breath, Torin ran after the dragon.


	4. Meeting Acyia

The dragon's gold scales glinted just ahead of Torin as it walked farther into the mountain. The tunnels branched apart into a confusing underground maze, and the soldier knew that he would have become lost very quickly if he had to try to find his way through the passageways alone. After a few minutes the path twisted and the dragon stopped at the entrance to a cave. "Oi, you. Some human is here."

There was a rustling in the cave. Torin stepped forward to peer around the giant creature, and stumbled into the room as it moved away suddenly.

"Who's there–? Oh. It's you. I should have known. What do _you_ want?"

Torin blinked as a shape emerged from the edge of the cave. "What?"

"You were sent here to rescue me, weren't you?" Now the knight could recognize the figure. Acyia's gray-green eyes glared at him as she walked across the cave. Her black hair was now cropped short, something her father, the king, wouldn't have liked.

"I knew he'd send someone eventually," the girl grumbled. "I thought it would be a different knight, though."

"Just because I'm not the best knight-!" started Torin indignantly.

"Yes, I know. Well, you can go back and tell them that I'm not coming."

"But-"

"I'm not coming! How hard is that to understand? And I thought knights were supposed to be smart!"

"But you _have_ to come!" Torin exclaimed. "The dragon kidnapped you, so I have to rescue you!"

Acyia frowned. "That's stupid."

"That's the right way!" Torin glared at the princess.

"Hey." The dragon stuck its head into the cave. "I didn't kidnap her, remember? I already explained that to you."

Torin rolled his eyes. "Right."

"It's true," admitted the princess. "It was a different dragon, not Terascythe."

"What did it look like?" asked the dragon. "Maybe I can figure out which one it is."

"There are other dragons?" Torin shuddered.

Terascythe stared at him, as if it were obvious. "Of course! There are tons of them in the mountain range and the forest on the other side of the mountains."

"Great," muttered the knight.

"So what did was this dragon like?"

Acyia closed her eyes. "I'm not exactly sure, but it wasn't yellow-orange like you. I was practicing archery, so I didn't see it coming." She thought harder. "But it brought me to a cave, and I saw that its scales were more red than yours. Kind of fiery colored."

"Wonderful," snapped Torin, losing his patience. "That only narrows it down to about 50 dragons, I bet. And what were you doing practicing archery, anyway?"

"I like archery!" protested the girl. "It's a lot better than learning how to make dresses, anyway. Really, would _you_ want to sew clothes when you could be shooting arrows into targets instead?"

"Do remember anything else about the dragon?" asked Terascythe before Torin could start arguing with Acyia.

"Yeah, there was another dragon in the cave. The one carrying me called it Gyio. They said that there was a plan to-"

"_Gyio?_" screeched Terascythe. The dragon's wings shot open in anger. "The other dragon was _Gyio?_ What is he doing?" Spines on the back of his neck bristled in fury. "I can't believe it! What was the plan?"

"As I was _saying_," snapped Acyia, the interruption irritating her, "The red-orange dragon said that they had a plan to overthrow Krenmar and reclaim the world from humans-"

"They want to kill Krenmar?" The dragon didn't seem to notice Acyia's furious glare as it cut her off again. "For Dalya's sake, that's the plan? "They're up to their wings in trouble! This is serious! Very serious!"

"If you don't mind, exactly who is Krenmar?" demanded Torin. He had a feeling that this was going to become much more than a trip to bring back the princess. "And Gyio. Who's he?"

"Krenmar? You don't know who Krenmar is?" By now Terascythe was staring at him, wondering just how stupid a human could be. "He's only the ruler of all the dragons!"

Torin blinked. "Dragons have a king?" he spluttered.

"Well, not exactly. Krenmar just makes sure that we follow the rules, like staying away from humans. He oversees things, and can deliver punishments, but that's really all he does. The point is that Krenmar is the most important dragon in the whole dragon society! If this red-orange dragon wants to overthrow him…" Terascythe's growl faded away. He was lost in thought.

"So you're going to tell him?" prompted Acyia.

"Yes, yes…" The dragon closed its eyes. "Very soon."

"Sorry to interrupt," muttered Torin impatiently. "But I'm supposed to just come here, fight you if necessary, and bring the princess back. So could you let me leave now?"

Terascythe's gaze snapped around to bore into him. "No. That would take too much time, and I can't leave you here."

"Leave me here-"

Acyia grinned as the dragon spoke again. "I need to go see Krenmar now, and you have to come with me."

**Yes, remember... Review! Review! Review! There's a reason that there's a button that says 'review'! -gasp- shocking, isn't it?  
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